Artificial Intelligence will provide marketing with the biggest single impact since the internet shifted a marketers’ purview from analogue to digital.
If we think of a marketing strategy as being a combination of a host of complementary channels, then simply put there isn’t a single channel that cannot be improved by the adoption of AI.
In this article, we look at a few example channels, how you could achieve these benefits and also some of the inherent risks.
AI and Marketing – an introduction
AI has the capability to not only make your marketing department more efficient (cost down), but also to increase its efficacy (revenue up).
Let’s think about these two elements with a couple of examples.
Firstly: All about the efficiencies!
Copywriting
When Chat GPT launched, the first application most marketers thought of was its ability to create high-quality content almost instantly, thus moving the job of the copywriter from writing to finessing.
It is true – many SEO software platforms are now using Chat GPT or equivalents to break the back of the huge quantity of copy that a website needs these days to stand out from the crowd. Best of all, it doesn’t seem to need a huge amount of experience to get good content. And, yes, your CMS is reliant on AI to protect and ameliorate the SEO value of your content.
The content creation doesn’t stop there though; Many design platforms are now inflected with automation, meaning that with simple prompts fantastic-looking graphics can be produced in little to no time. And, yes, they will be congruent with the all-important brand guidelines as long as this is what you have requested.
Research
“Anecdote isn’t the plural of data”.
Any strategic decision should be made from a position of knowledge. It is often the marketing department’s role to provide accurate, reliable and empirical information from which the business can make strategic decisions with increased surety.
With the advent and democratisation of machine learning, research is now firmly in the realm of Artificial Intelligence. AI has the ability to comb the internet for the precise marketing information that you need. This can include customer, market and competitor intelligence. You can highlight outliers and chose to ignore them…or learn from them.
What was a costly and time-consuming task can now be completed more fully in an instant. There’s little or no excuse to make decisions based on gut feel.
Secondly: Bring me more business!
Lead Generation
Whatever channels you utilise to bring leads into your business, AI can help. Let’s take a quick look at social media.
Today, key platforms such as LinkedIn and Meta have AI built-in, meaning that you can identify and communicate with your target market more efficiently than ever.
You can utilise AI testing tools that will bring laser-focussed messaging to sub-groups of your target market. You can use AI to offer up insights into sentiment and behaviour…and have your messaging react accordingly.
You can also increase engagement with AI powered quizzes, surveys and polls…brilliant for brand awareness and stickiness.
Lead Conversion
AI tools are transforming the way that retargeting works by moving it into the automated realm. Rather than needing to manage multiple pipelines of prospects, you can programme an AI agent to review the status of each prospect, reach out to them over different media (email, SMS etc) and converse with them to progress them towards conversion.
What are the risks of moving marketing to AI?
There are, unfortunately, real risks in using AI in your marketing department. If it isn’t done properly, your sales and, more importantly your brand, can be harmed. Consider whether you would bring a new marketing executive into the team without interview, and set them loose on your marketing channels. This is the risk that AI can pose if not handled expertly.
The key tenets of ‘test and measure’ continue to apply.
A more subtle risk is in using AI to produce that all-important copy for your website. The high probability is that by generating your content through AI, you are merely going to produce the same copy as your competitors, even if it is finessed by a human copywriter. The copy will not be given any authority by your search engine, and you run the risk of being indistinct from anyone else in your market.
Worse still, because AI is acquiring its intel from the internet…which is replate with its own errors…you run the risk of providing incorrect information on your site, which will only reduce the credibility you may have spent years in garnering.
It’s not a good look.
How to mitigate the risks of AI marketing
We advocate that AI should be treated like a new science, one which needs a sector specialist to ensure that risks are removed and efficiencies maximised.
We can predict a world where an AI marketing engineer supports all members of the team, across every channel, with risk analyses having been carried out, and a clear pathway having been agreed upon.
As an example, let’s look at the role of a prompt engineer. The job of a prompt engineer is to ask exactly the right questions of Large Language Models so that the right answers are received. These answers will be precise and specific, and will not introduce erroneous information into a workstreams.
This might sound simple, but it is a role in its own right. For more information, look at our blog on ‘The Art of Prompt Engineering’ here: https://northernitacademy.com/the-art-of-prompt-engineering/
AI and Marketing channels
NITA have experience of AI making the following marketing ‘channels’ more productive:
- Search Engine Marketing
- Organic Social Media
- Paid Social Media
- Paid Search
- Data management/ CRM
- Retargeting
- Research
- Data analysis
- …and more
How on earth do I start?
NITA are here to help. We can offer a free half-day consultation with your head of marketing to understand where you are currently, and where you want to get to. We can help you define your AI marketing strategy…or we can simply introduce you to the tools that will help.
NITA employ business analysts and AI engineers who can train your own staff or be your consultative partner to guide you through your transformative AI marketing journey.
Author: Alistair Gladstone (This blog was 100% written by a human!)
Explore related courses:
AI Business Foundations Course
AI in Business Applications Course